My Stint as an Arab-TV Film Pundit

As insincere as this may sound, I didn’t get into film blogging for the money. The real rewards of my line of work are not monetary, nor are they the ability to expense movie tickets and my $50 overdue rental fee. No, the real magic of film blogging is the ability to share and discuss ideas about the cultural impact of cinema across the new media landscape. Today, I was given an opportunity that reminded me of why I got into blogging in the first place: I was invited to appear as a film pundit for none other than AlHurra TV. For those of you who haven’t heard of AlHurra—you philistine—it’s an Arab-language satellite station based in Washington, and broadcast across the Middle East.

I was on discuss why movies about the American war effort in Iraq have failed to resonate with audiences. The latest such film was Green Zone, which, despite the involvement of the director and star behind the last two, tremendously succesful Jason Bourne movies, fizzled at the box office last weekend.

Things began disastrously when my hosts Enji and Ahmed said “Julian Sancton from the Vanity Fair, welcome,” and I answered, “Welcome!” After my heart stopped pounding—this was AlHurra!—I answered that there is no fundamental reason that films about the war in Iraq can’t do well. After all, Fahrenheit 911 was one of the most successful movies of 2004. There just hasn’t been a very good feature film about Iraq until The Hurt Locker, which suffered at the box office simply because of timid distribution; where it did screen, it did extremely well.

Aside from The Hurt Locker, though, movies about the Iraq war—from In the Valley of Elah to Stop-Loss, to Lions for Lambs and Brian De Palma’s Redacted—tend to have thinly veiled political undertones. While it’s admirable for filmmakers to be engaged, that’s not enough to be engaging. It’s hard enough for a current-event drama to break through during the recession as audiences favor escapist movies like Avatar and Alice and Wonderland. Iraq war movies, by contrast, have been depressing and complex (as is the war itself) but have not yielded any truly memorable cinematic moments. Maybe Greengrass should have considered 3-D.

It’s common to compare Iraq films to Vietnam movies, which, on the whole, have fared better both critically and commercially. There are several reasons I can think of for that. First, though it was equally controversial and just as thoroughly covered in the media, Vietnam was a very different war because of the draft, which brought the war home and heightened its impact on screen. Mandatory conscription also meant that most characters in Vietnam movies didn’t want to be there any more than we would have, which makes for better drama.

Second, American auteurs in the 1970s, such as Francis Ford Coppola or Michael Cimino, were bolder, and studios at that time were relaxing their grip. The psychedelic, insane third act of Apocalypse Now hammers in the point that war is hell in a way that Green Zone, however accurately it replicates the soldier’s experience on the ground, never could.

It’s important to remember that none of the great Vietnam movies came out during the war itself. Coming Home and The Deer Hunter,which Peter Biskind wrote about in March 2008, both came out in 1978, Apocalypse Now in 1979, Platoon in 1985, and Good Morning Vietnam and Full Metal Jacket in 1987. So maybe we should just get the hell out of Iraq already so can start seeing better movies!

I didn’t address all of these points in my AlHurra interview. And I was stumped when Enji and Ahmed asked me a very simple follow-up question: Why aren’t there any movies about the war in Afghanistan? I wish now that I had mentioned Restrepo, the wonderful, Sundance-topping documentary by Tim Hetherington and V.F. contributing editor Sebastian Junger. But it was my first time on Arab TV (or TV in general), so cut me a break. I’m just glad I didn’t say the wrong thing and escalate the hostilities.